


Brother, don’t grow up

by AutumnHobbit



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Brothers, Child Death, Flash-fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, The multiverse, mentioned drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 04:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnHobbit/pseuds/AutumnHobbit
Summary: The multiverse conspires to let Dick attend Jason’s funeral. With Jason.It’s like that, sometimes.





	Brother, don’t grow up

**Author's Note:**

> this is sad nothing because i love dick and jay

“Well, it looks just as shitty as our Gotham, if that’s any consolation,” Jason said conversationally as he stepped out of the alley, dusting off his clothes from their sudden trip through the multiverse. He didn’t want any cross-dimensional pollen on his sleeves, thank you very much.

Dick stepped out behind him, running a hand through his hair nervously. It was a habit he’d had ever since he grew the damn curly mop out far longer than need be, and Jason grinned at the deadpan frustration on his face as the entire mass of hair flopped back down over his eye again as soon as he dropped his hand. Dick shot him an unimpressed look and Jason raised his hands in surrender and turned around, glancing at the street again. 

It was cold, and he tugged his leather jacket around himself a bit tighter as he stood there, looking up. Snow was beginning to fall, the tiny particles looking grey and dusty above the reflective panels covering the skyscrapers all around them.

“We seem to still be in crime alley,” Dick said behind him, his voice going down a bit. Jason guessed he was examining the scene, trying to get a feel for what they’d been unwittingly transported into. “Weather’s the same, so we’re probably not far off from our usual universe—“

“Good. Don’t feel like dealing with any gender bends or alien reversals,” Jason sighed, then furrowed his brow and turned around when he realized Dick had gone uncharacteristically silent. Sure enough, he was just standing there, staring at a newspaper he’d apparently picked up off the streetcorner and looking  _ wrecked _ , face pale and eyes pained. “What.” Jason said, exasperation warring with sudden dread pooling in his gut. 

Dick glanced at him with trepidation, and Jason swore his eyes were wet. Jason gritted his teeth and steeled himself. “What.”

Shaking his head, Dick took a couple steps towards him and fanned the paper out at him with a grip that shook slightly as he held it. 

Jason blinked. His own face, with a little gap-toothed grin, was staring up at him in the margins of the front page. He even remembered his mom taking the picture. 

He’d been three. 

The headline read, “Parents Charged In Accidental Overdose Death Of Toddler.”

Dick was probably expecting some sort of vast emotional breakdown from the knowledge that in multiple universes, Jason was doomed to die young, a victim of those around him most responsible for his protection. But aside from a small, potent sear of disappointed pain in his chest, his expression was unchanged and the most he could manage was a flat “Huh.” 

Dick, with a jagged laugh that was too close to a scoff, said, “Yeah,” and glanced down at it again, before looking up at the dull sky. “Well, we know whoever sent us here is a sadistic bastard.”

“Hmm.” Jason snatched the paper from Dick’s hand—he didn’t need to keep staring at it like that, anyway—and read over the story, disconnectedly curious. Dick paced back and forth in tight, strained circles on the sidewalk, looking everywhere but at Jason. 

Open-and-shut case, really, from the sound of it. Bruce would have said you could never judge by the sound of it, but Jason fully intended to make sure that Bruce never heard a word of this once he came to get them back. Jason Peter Todd, aged three, was found unresponsive in his apartment by a neighbor, who then called 911 both to deal with the child and with the distraught and still intoxicated mother. Emergency services had pronounced him dead at the scene, and a screening had come back with massive amounts of opioids in his bloodstream. An investigation later uncovered that the unsupervised child had climbed a countertop and downed an entire bottle of brightly-colored pills, and had fallen asleep on the floor underneath the chair and never woken up. The child’s father, who hadn’t been home in weeks and was a persistent offender, was under arrest in an unrelated crime. The mother suffered a mental breakdown and had to be restrained from committing suicide by overdose, herself. 

Jason’s heart ached for his mom, but otherwise the story seemed typical to his universal experience. Sad, but pointless to fret over. He started to hand the paper back towards Dick, but then caught sight of the add-on at the end of the story; a memorial service was being held for the child on the corner of the street nearest his apartment building, and the whole neighborhood was invited. 

Dick saw it, too, and now Jason was certain his eyes were wet. He looked away from the older man, uncomfortable. Dick so rarely looked rattled around him—-hell, when they were younger he’d seemed untouchable, always cool, always collected, always tough and certain and capable—

It had never really occurred to him that anything could hurt Dick. 

___

 

They decided to hole up in a diner just down the street from Jason’s old apartment building, to get out of the cold and eat as part of the bargain. Thankfully, their wallets had stayed where they were, and the currency still worked. Jason ate his way through a fried chicken club sandwich while Dick picked at some form of salad and soup. 

The snowstorm was quickly adding to the already-falling darkness and Jason snagged a fry from his plate, looking across the street. He wondered if anyone would even show up in the snow. 

Dick was still quiet and subdued. He’d barely eaten any of that damn salad, and it had turkey and bacon and blue cheese dressing thick enough to rest a spoon on. Jason threw a fry at him. It bounced off his nose.

Dick glanced up, but only held Jason’s gaze for a second before it fell down again. Jason kind of hated his eyes right now because they were so damn sad. He wasn’t sure whether it annoyed him more, or hurt him more.

He leaned over and dunked another one of his fries in Dick’s dressing. “Bruce is taking his sweet time,” he said, through a mouthful of fry. 

Dick shrugged. “Clark’s probably busy somewhere.” He said lowly. 

Jason was suddenly fed up. “Stop it.” He bit out.

Dick looked up; sharply, but still slower than he usually would have, and he still didn’t look angry, just preoccupied. “What?” He asked, finally looking at Jason, brow wrinkled. 

“Pouting.” Jason hissed under his breath, eyes roving the people around them even as he folded his arms across his chest defensively, slumping back against the booth seat. “Having whatever little fit you’re having. Ignoring me actively trying to annoy you. Acting like someone just fucking—-“

Died. Oh. Dick was staring at him, and _now_ he looked angry. Jason bit his tongue, and his cheeks burned. He glared off at the diamond patterned flooring. His heart was pounding in his chest. 

Suddenly Dick pushed himself up on the table, and was stalking past the other tables and shoving out the door. The bell rang as it slammed shut behind him, the howl of the cold wind abruptly cut off.

“Shit.” Jason half-groaned under his breath, standing up himself and hurriedly throwing too much money at the table without looking back. “Dick—“ he only called his brother’s name as he went through the door, himself; but he was cut out of his thought as he slowed and carefully crossed the street under the thick snow, drawn forward by the crowd of flickering lights glowing dimly through the storm. 

Under the shadow of his apartment building, a crowd of people stood huddled together on the street, in jackets and blankets and whatever ragged clothes they had. Jason hesitated as he came to the outside of the group, but people moved automatically to make way for him, and he hovered awkwardly but went in anyway, avoiding the gazes but unable to avoid seeing the drawn, sorrowful faces of the people around him. 

Up against the bricks that started the base of the wall, there was a display set up of a few photographs of him. His newborn photo from Gotham General’s database. A couple of him from an infant up to age two. And the one from the newspaper. There was a bigger print of that, blown up in a plastic frame. There were teddy bears and flowers and candles stacked around it, and a curious pain twisted in his stomach at the sight of them. Looking around, he was surprised to see a few faces he knew. A knot of pre-teens and teenagers stood together, crying in their little group, half in each others’ arms. They were part of a big mixed family that shared an apartment just down at the end of the hall from him. Jason remembered the bigger kids coming and picking him up to play with him, carrying him around their apartment and down to their basketball games in the alley. He wasn’t sure why, but they’d seemed to be fond of him. Now he felt a pang of guilt that he’d never gotten back in touch with them, after everything. 

A lady who lived only a couple doors down from them—and now that he thought about it, probably the one who’d found him—was sobbing openly, and being supported by a younger woman. Jason winced. He supposed finding a dead baby right next door was bound to hurt whether you really knew them or not. 

He both was and wasn’t surprised to see Dick in among the huddle near the front, near enough to see the photos, but not close enough to be in the first row. He was, however, sharply surprised to see the tear-tracks streaking down his face, the crumpled expression that was almost pained from how tight his body was locked as he sobbed into one hand. 

Heart clenched, Jason nudged his way through the crowd until he was behind Dick, close enough to be in peripheral vision. Even in the midst of his breakdown, Dick still looked back and met his eyes with his own red ones, and Jason nodded silently in acknowledgement, his lips twisted in a sympathetically pained line. Dick turned back, and Jason saw his gaze firmly on the baby photo. For whatever reason, Jason felt tears burn his own eyes, too. Dick had never seen his baby pictures before. 

The wind whipped cold snowflakes into Jason’s cheeks. He ducked his head a bit into the collar of his jacket and wiggled his fingers in his gloves, hands firmly in his pockets. He hoped Bruce came by that evening. He didn’t want to sleep in the snow again.

A soft voice somewhere started singing unsteadily. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.”

It picked up beside and behind him in the familiar continuation. “...that saved a wretch like me.”

Jason gave a quiet laugh, under his breath. This version hadn’t had time to be a wretch. He sure had, though. He instinctively joined in lowly when the, “I once was lost, but now am found,” part started around him, feeling mildly awkward for singing at his own funeral, but more worried about coming off disrespectful among these grieving Gothamites than of propriety. 

They sang all the verses of the song, out there in the cold. The small congregation started to break apart shortly after the breaking of the song, neighbors staggering off with each other towards the relative shelter of the apartments. Jason was left standing there, watching the flickering candle lights that were still glowing. A few people still hovered about, talking quietly. 

Jason made his way up to the hunched shoulders of the familiar shape, the black curls now even more tangled from the snowflakes sitting atop them. He stopped next to his older brother and glanced down at the top of his head. Every jagged sob that made its way through the muffling of his gloved hand felt like a knife through his heart.

Eventually, Dick looked up at him. He was a mess. Red eyes, red nose. Faintly shaking, probably both from the cold and the exertion. 

Jason stepped up to him and lifted his arm. His older brother folded into him, his head fitting under Jason’s chin. He clasped both hands in Jason’s jacket and held on with a death grip. Jason wrapped his arms around him just as tight, buried his nose in Dick’s cold, wet hair. 

He was still crying, and it made Jason cry, too. Just a little. “I’m right here,” he said, his voice breaking. He rubbed between Dick’s shoulderblades. “I’m okay.” 

“I-I know.” Dick stuttered out, voice croaky from tears. He pushed back enough to scrub at his eyes with one gloved, frozen hand, then quickly clung to Jason’s side again. “Thank God, I know.”

They stood there while Dick took sharp breaths of the cold air, trying to ground himself. When he’d finally calmed enough that he wasn’t being wracked by the sobs anymore, Jason gently pulled back and the two of them sized each other up. Somehow, neither of them were surprised when they turned around to see Bruce and Clark emerging from the alley. 

They accepted Bruce’s tight hugs, lingering for both of them, with a bit more concern for Dick’s clear emotional state. “Are you both okay?” Bruce’s deep voice was ridiculously worried, and Jason felt his eyes sting, again. Bruce looked over their shoulders, wrinkled his brow. “What’s…?”

“It’s nothing, Dad.” Dick said, grasping Bruce’s wrist gently. “Let’s go home.”

Bruce was surprised, but stepped back to let Dick forward, and followed him.

Jason caught up. “Hey, D?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re my favorite big brother.”

Dick’s blue eyes teared up again, but his smile could light up even this Gotham. “You’re damn right I am, Little Wing.” 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr: autumnhobbit.tumblr.com


End file.
